Amy Schwartz Moretti
Amy Schwartz Moretti is Director of the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, Caroline Paul King Chair in Strings, and professor of violin in the Mercer University Townsend School of Music.
She developed and curates the Fabian Concert Series on campus featuring internationally distinguished artists in chamber music concerts and master classes. In addition to her performances as an orchestral soloist and concertmaster, she is an award-winning chamber music artist, appearing in concert series and at music festivals across North America, Europe, and Asia, and she is a member of the internationally acclaimed Ehnes Quartet.
Past positions include concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony and The Florida Orchestra. She has served as guest concertmaster for the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Houston, and Pittsburgh; the New York Pops and Hawaii Pops; and the festival orchestras of Brevard, Colorado, and Grand Teton. Throughout her career, she has been an advocate of chamber music and instrumental in the development of intensive workshops for young musicians in Oregon, Florida, and Georgia. Her dedication to collaboration and performance complements her directorship and inspires her teaching and coaching of the Center’s gifted young musicians.
She is recognized as a deeply expressive artist and known for her musical career of broad versatility. Recent performances include the premiere of award-winning composer Christopher Alan Schmitz’s Violin Concerto and concerts as far away as Korea and Hawaii and as close as Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina. Recent festival appearances include Bridgehampton, ChamberFest Cleveland, La Jolla, Meadowmount, Manchester, Vancouver, and Seattle. Recent projects include performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven String Quartets to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth and the performance in Seoul, Korea, of the rarely heard Ludwig Spohr “Concerto for String Quartet, Op.131 in a minor” with the KBS Symphony Orchestra directed by Li Xinciao.
She has recorded for Chandos, Harmonia Mundi, Onyx Classics, CBC Records, BCMF/Naxos and Sono Luminus. Her Prokofiev and Bartók duos with renowned violinist James Ehnes were included in recordings that received Juno Awards for “Classical Album of the Year – Solo or Chamber Ensemble” in 2014 and again in 2015. The Ehnes Quartet’s recording of Schubert and Sibelius string quartets was nominated for a 2017 Gramophone Award.
The Cleveland Institute of Music has recognized her with an Alumni Achievement Award and she is the 2014 San Francisco Conservatory of Music Fanfare Honoree, their first Pre-college graduate to be recognized. In 2018, she was selected as one of Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year. She performs on her treasured Jean Baptiste Vuillaume violin made in Paris in 1874. Born in Wisconsin, raised in North Carolina and California, Amy lives in Georgia with her husband and two sons.